Antworten auf oft gestellte Fragen

God and the Suffering of Humanity

We Christians often tend to shoot back at questions, especially if they are provocative, straight with arguments. But we forget that there are different reasons for the same question! It must be clarified first whether it is personal or general motives for the question. Both motives are to be taken seriously, but to be answered differently! In both cases it is of great advantage to first find out why the question is being asked. Ask questions (see the booklet "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, by Campus for Christ for some examples)!

People, at least those in Switzerland, do not stand before the cross these days. In our country, between the people and the cross, there is a church culture moat and some walls, which symbolize questions, doubts, and arguments inculcated by the Enlightenment concerning the God of the Bible.

These walls can be used as a barrier between the people and the cross

These walls can become extremely hardened if we do not meet people in love and take their questions seriously. For example, people who are convinced of the theory of evolution are all too often fobbed off with the argument, "If you want to descend from apes, that's your business - but I don't descend from apes!" What that can do to a deep thinker who has in some way made himself wise in the field of natural science is certainly not particularly conducive to further conversation about faith.

Important Principles

Three things to keep in mind as we then move on to answering the questions.

None of the most difficult questions can be answered entirely. But this need not worry us, for our mission is to help, with wisdom through the Holy Spirit, that people can break down the walls enough to make it possible to take a step of faith over the rest of the wall. Over the wall - towards the cross! This step is not our responsibility, but can be left completely to the work of the Holy Spirit - respectively, that decision is up to the person themselves.

For every conversation it is true: Not the person with the other opinion is the opponent, but the battle takes place on the spiritual level! Prayer is not to be neglected in any case, no matter how good the arguments!

In any case, one must meet the person with love and try to win his friendship: Friendship Evangelism! To win people as friends with the love of Jesus, to model the love of Jesus to them and to bring the gospel closer to them - this is friendship evangelism. In such a relationship, even a lively discussion, where you challenge the person a bit, has its place! The fear of losing the friends because of this is understandable, but absolutely to be deposited at the cross!

Without diligence, no prize!

Far too often we argue with knowledge from "hearing say" - concerning other religions, science, and to some extent even concerning our own faith in Jesus and the Word of God! We lack the basic knowledge, the foundation, with which no earthquake in the world can destroy the house of faith.

To gain the necessary knowledge and experience there is nothing but "hard work"! Reading and studying the Bible, surrendering questions to God in prayer, reading books, discussing issues with people of different and like views, etc. It's worth it just because you get closer to the point of seeing the world through God's eyes, since we depend so much on His wisdom. Further, by studying other religions, for example, you see that you have things in common. Starting a conversation with similarities is by far more productive, as you can get to the differences via the similarities, and then justify them.

The three main groups of questions

There are three main groups of questions that people have concerning belief in God:

1. 1.God and the suffering of humanity
2. 2.Religions and the credibility of the Bible
3. 3.Creation or evolution

1.God and the suffering of humanity
Provocative questions and statements

• Can there be a loving God when there is evil and suffering?
• Would a loving God ever torture people in hell?
• Where is God when innocent children die (war, disease, famine)?
  Either God is not perfectly GOOD or not perfectly ALMIGHTY - if He were both, there would be no suffering in the world!

These are probably the most frequently asked questions, since everyone is personally confronted with suffering at some point! Moreover, "suffering" is also the most common objection raised against the Christian faith. Here are some approaches to answering the questions.

||

Free will of man

"Without freedom there is no love - freedom is the price of love! Because God wills love, He wills freedom, even if in freedom there is the possibility of abusing it and thus inflicting suffering on one another." J.B.Brantschen (14)

Imagine a perfectly just world that is entirely without suffering. In this imaginary world, morality would also have to operate according to fixed laws, just like our laws of nature. The punishment for wrong behavior would feel like physical pain. If you reach into a flame, you are immediately "punished" with a warning pain. A fair and just world would punish sin just as surely and quickly. This world would be just and logical - everyone would know what God expects. So there would be no real freedom. All people would act rightly because they would benefit from it. Any deed, no matter how good, would be immediately contaminated by our selfish motives. Moreover, it would be impossible for people to love God freely and therefore be obedient to Him. This view is very old: Satan reproached God that Job loved God only because he "bribed" him with blessings and wealth, thus asserting that God was not worth loving for his own sake.

Voluntary love is so important to God that He allows all the attacks on Job and even puts up with our world becoming what we find today. To illustrate this love, the Bible uses the image of the bridegroom and bride who freely love each other. In the imaginary world, however, Jesus would be the bridegroom and the church a mistress: The mistress is spoiled, bribed, and imprisoned by the lover!

Philip Yancey uses the following image to illustrate what God wants for us:

"A father who wants to protect his beloved little daughter from all pain might prevent her from learning to walk. After all, she might fall! He therefore carries her around in his arms all the time. In time, this spoiled child would become a completely life-less creature, unable to walk and completely dependent on her father.

God created man in his own image. For the sake of voluntary love, He gives man Free Will knowing that there is a possibility that people will turn away from God. If we assume that God is omniscient, i.e. knows past, present and future, God knew the moment He created how the whole "STORY" would turn out. God also created the angels with a free will, otherwise Lucifer (a cherubim) could not have rebelled against God by wanting to place himself above God. God also placed the Tree of Knowledge between good and evil in the Garden, knowing that with man's Free Will, there was a possibility that the forbidden tree could be eaten from.

Now it is also clear that it is not possible for people to receive from God what they see as an "ideal" world, but at the same time want nothing to do with God, let alone a personal (love) relationship!

||

Fall of Man

By eating the fruit from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve made themselves sinful and had to leave paradise, since God is all sinless! Man and the whole creation (Gen. 3, 14-18) were punished and waited since then for the redemption (Rom. 8, 19-23) which was accomplished in Jesus. So man abused his freedom and one can simplify it by saying that man brought all the suffering into the world through sin (gr. Harmatia= "missing the mark" or in other words "being separated from God"). That we live in a sinful world is described by Isaiah in 64, 5: "We are all stained with iniquity; even our very best deeds are as filthy as a dirty garment. Certain people are of the ancient opinion that everyone who does good will also receive good, and whoever does evil will also be punished. That this is not so is written in Job 42:6, when Elihu is rebuked by God. There are probably cases in the Bible where God's judgment came because of sin on the part of individuals, but not all suffering can be the direct result of personal sin. Peter distinguishes between suffering as a result of personal sin (1 Peter 2:20a), suffering that has nothing to do with our sin (1 Peter 2:19), and the possibility of doing good and suffering (for it) (1 Peter 2:20,b)

Suffering exists on a global, communal, and personal level. The majority of all these sufferings can be traced back to sin, respectively sinful or faulty actions of people. Examples in the bible are many: The Amalekites, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the people of Israel just before they were carried off by the Assyrians. These were people who did cruel things like sacrificing people, having wild orgies, etc., which displeases God. The wars and disasters were not simply genocide of innocent people - God was using his people as his executors of judgment!

But what about the rest of the suffering that is not directly related to sin?

So God left open the possibility because of free will that evil can happen. Evil comes, one might say, when people choose to do evil - suffering results. However, one cannot therefore say that God created evil!

The subject of suffering is not dealt with systematically, philosophically in the Bible. The Bible is a practical book. Yet there are some statements:

Genesis 1-2: Suffering is not part of God's original created order. There was no suffering in the world before man rebelled against God.

Revelation 21: There will be no more suffering when God creates a new heaven and a new earth. So it is not God's will that people should suffer, but God allows suffering.

||

God's omniscience versus man's limitation

If you look at the true events of the Bible somewhat in overview, you can clearly see the handwriting of God. We are privileged to have the Word of God to give us such powerful insight into what God does! The question now arises, what right do we have to blame the Creator for something we simply do not understand!

Philip Yancey (2) discusses the book of Job at length and concludes that the book doesn't really answer the "why" question, but rather talks about dealing with suffering. It is a book about faith in God. God lets us see behind the curtain in the first 2 chapters, but Job didn't learn about the "wager between Lucifer and God" until the very end! Most impressively, although it is about suffering for 36 chapters, God does not answer the "suffering question" but God says to Job in abbreviated form, "Until YOU understand a little more how to keep the physical universe running, don't tell me how to handle the moral universe. God describes his greatness, omnipotence, omniscience in Job 38-41, but agrees with Job in the chapter after, his friends were wrong in their talk!

Àpropos of being wrong. There are some accounts of it in the OT, for example, Solomon's many wives, adultery, certain wars, seeing a clairvoyant, etc. Just because these bad things are in the Bible does not mean God approves of them!

||

Suffering can serve us for good

Philip Yancey describes in great detail that pain, as a cause of suffering, is essentially a positive thing. Lepers no longer have any sense of pain and unconsciously mutilate themselves by, for example, reaching their hand too close to the fire. Without medical treatment, the extremities will rot very quickly. So pain is a very useful warning system. Pain causes us to pull our hand back immediately. By the way, it is the same cells that transmit pain that transmit a gentle romantic caress. Fascinating! Also the suffering (pain) of the world, can be seen as a warning signal that something is wrong with the world.

When suffering hits you personally:

When suffering hits you personally, the question is sure to come, "Why me? Why did this happen to me?" Often it is only in severe suffering that people begin to think about God, death, and the meaning of life! For Christians, too, being hit by a severe sorrow means searching one's heart to see if repentance should be made in any area of life. However, utmost caution is needed in explaining the suffering, especially of other people! Suffering, then, often becomes God's megaphone for people to finally think about God.

Philip Yancey (1) devotes much of his book to the question of how to meet people in suffering and how to deal with suffering ourselves. Our response in the face of suffering can be enormously decisive about the life to come - either one becomes embittered, grows enormously in faith, or is even set free from suffering!

||

Fighting suffering

"Says one turtle to the other, "Sometimes I want to ask why God allows poverty, hunger, and injustice when He could do something about it."

And the other turtle says, "I'm afraid God might ask me the same question."

Interestingly, accusations such as "Why is God allowing all this starvation in the world?" often come from people who are not in the situation! Those very people could actually do something, or usually more, about it than is the case!

Jesus has been through the suffering of the world. Jesus is there, He is beside us in the deepest depths of our lives. Are we broken? He was baked like bread for us. Are we despised by others? He has been despised. Jesus is acquainted with pain, suffering, grief, and death. Jesus even changed the meaning of death! Every tear of the world is also his tear. Jesus fought suffering with all his miracles. This Jesus called us Christians to act according to his example. Throughout the Bible, you can notice something: God uses people to build his kingdom. He could probably have angels do it all too. God's plan eats that humans carry his love into the world in word and deed with the help and power of the Holy Spirit! This, of course, is only possible for man as God takes the first step toward man with His love and grace.

It is no secret that the world produces enough food to feed every person in the world. The problem is with man!

Application

Now try to counter each other's provocative questions (in a team, among friends, in the family) with the arguments mentioned. Use the Bible as often as possible when doing so!

||

Religions and the Credibility of the Bible

Provocative questions and statements

• At the end of the day, doesn't every religion lead to the same God?
• It is pure arrogance to claim that Jesus is the only way!
• The Bible was first passed down orally, later written down and last but not least corrections were made to the copies - surely all sorts of things were changed!
• Can't the religious representatives just leave each other alone? After all, you can learn from each other instead of fighting each other!
• How can the Crusade be reconciled with Christian charity (church history is full of violence and oppression)?

||

Is the Bible God's Word

In the book "The Facts of Faith" by Josh McDowell (5), you can find the answer to the question of how the Bible came to be in great detail - a must read for anyone who wants to find arguments on this subject!

In the time of Abraham, the Bible was not simply handed down orally, but there was already cuneiform writing.

It has been proven that by the time of Moses, writing could be done on His and papyrus. Later, parchment was used.

Because all these media cannot survive the span of 3000 years without completely yellowing, there was some kind of professional genre responsible for copying the texts in each period.

• Around 200 B.C. the OT was put together, that is, the many writings were put together into a package by the scribes. There was also a decision for the NT as to what all belonged in it. This time it was the church fathers of that time (200-400 AD). This was necessary so that nothing could and could be added to the Word of God.
• The oldest almost complete Bible can be found in the British Library in London. The "Codex Alexandrinus", written around 400 AD - that is, before Mohammed came into the world!
• The most valuable find is the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were copied between 200 BC and 100 AD. Many extra-biblical books have also been discovered, providing insight into religious interaction. These scrolls match the first complete OT from 900 AD.

Many pieces of historical evidence support the reliability of the Bible - to name a few:

• Succession of Kings and Biblical Cities (convincing by due agreement with archaeological finds)
• Jericho (all walls fell outward, confirmed by excavations - usually walls fall inward!)
• Flood
• Tribal succession of Abraham
• The entry of Jacob's family into Egypt & Joseph's tomb
• Assyrian invasion and Babylonian captivity

If you are well informed about the origin of the Bible (written by 40 authors over a period of 1500 years), the argument that OT prophecies are fulfilled in the NT is a very strong one! We can prove with the Dead Sea Scrolls that the prophecies could not possibly have been subsequently emended.

Also for the New Testament, one finds much extra-biblical evidence for the authenticity of the events (Lee Strobel / Josh McDowell). Especially concerning Jesus, there are many extra-biblical reporters who reported on him. E.g. Tacitus, a 1st century Roman who is considered one of the most accurate historians in the ancient world, the Jew Josephus (90 AD), or another Roman named Thallus (52 AD)

With all the arguments, one can either believe the Bible is true or not. If one believes that the Bible is God's word and is convinced of the authenticity of the tradition, there is no possibility for any other religion, because Jesus makes the absolute claim. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6)!

||

Main differences with other religions

The main difference between believing the Bible and believing other religions is that we have salvation through the death of Jesus and cannot redeem ourselves by good works. We are bought dearly (1Co 6:20).

Jesus, unlike the "founders of religion," is the only one who claims to be God. All the others were just teachers or prophets, whose grave, by the way, is not empty either!

||

What does Islam

teach?

Out of all the religions, sects, and splinter groups, Islam is to be brought in for a comparison, for in Islam we are confronted with many argumentations.

Mohammed was born in 570 AD and married a rich widow when he was 25. Mohammed no longer had to work and had more time for meditation. Polytheism (the belief in many gods) prevailed in Mecca and Mohammed came to believe that there was one God, probably influenced by the Jews and Christians living there. At the age of 40, by his own account, he received the first revelation from the angel Gabriel and became convinced that he was a prophet.

Muslims believe that Muhammad is the last and therefore the most important prophet - all the other prophets in the Bible (Adam, Abraham, David and even Jesus, but he is only considered a prophet), are accepted. If there is any contradiction, what Muhammad said applies.

In Islam there are also different directions, yet all Muslims have the following in common:

• They believe in one God (Allah)
• They believe in angels (Gabriel who delivered the Quran and two angels who follow each person: One writes down the good, the other the bad deeds)
• They believe in them holy books: one got Moses (5 books of Moses - "Torah"), one David (Psalms "Zabur"), one Jesus Gospels - "Injil") and the last Muhammad - the Qur'an.
• As mentioned, they believe in the prophets, the Day of Judgment, and predestination. Muslims have no certainty about whether they will be saved or not!

<||

Misunderstandings of Muslims regarding the Bible

• Most believe that Christians believe in three gods: God, Mary, and Jesus
• The phrase "Son of God" is understood to mean that God took a wife (Mary) and produced a son
• For the Muslim, the death of Jesus on the cross is an unworthy end for a god! The death of Jesus on the cross is not necessary for Muslims for the forgiveness of sins.
• Christianity is a western religion. (This is obviously not so, since our roots of faith are in the nation of Israel!)
• The Bible is not trustworthy - it has been altered from the original over the years.

But the Qur'an itself encourages (in Suras 5, 43-52, 70-72) to believe in the scriptures (Bible)

||

The Gospel of Barnabas

Muslims claim that the Gospel of Barnabas is the only true one. In it, they claim that Jesus is not the Son of God, Judas Iscariot, and not Jesus died on the cross, and that Jesus prophesied the coming of Mohammed.

Muslims claim that the Gospel of Barnabas is the only true Gospel

The only known writing of the Gospel of Barnabas is in Venice. In the introduction to this writing, evidence is provided which shows that this writing is a forgery. Muslims, however, omitted the introduction and published this writing! Moreover, Barnabas was not one of the twelve disciples either. Add to this the fact that none of the ancient writings before the 5th century even once mention the Gospel of Barnabas.

||

Mohammed was foretold in the Bible

Muslims claim that the Bible predicts the prophet Muhammad in Deut. 18:15,18. In Jesus, however, the prophecy comes true when He says in John 5:46, "If ye believe Moses, believe ye me also: for he hath written of me." Such a reference is found nowhere in the Qur'an!

One could go into many more arguments Muslims have against the Bible. But I would encourage you to study the Bible well, and if you come in contact with Muslims, to read one of the books listed at the end.

||

How do I tell a Muslim about God

The important thing, as I mentioned in the introduction, is not to argue primarily, but to listen in love first and find out exactly what the Muslim believes. Not every Muslim believes exactly the same!

Start with the commonalities such as Abraham, then show the path of salvation through David to Jesus. Also talk about how you personally pray with God - about the relationship with God, how to apply the wisdom from God in everyday life, and how Jesus has personally changed your life!

||

Creation or Evolution?

• Provocative Questions and Statements:
• Does we need a God if we can explain the laws of nature and life through evolution?
• It is only a matter of time before all the "wonders" of nature are revealed by science! With the current state of science, isn't it a bit naive to believe in Adam and Eve?
• Belief in God is something for the weak who need a stopgap for everything they don't understand!
• The origin and evolution of organisms has been proven!

The biggest mistake is when we take the arguments of evolutionists lightly out of ignorance. With evolution and creationism (= creationism) is often looked at the same facts, just with different "sunglasses". Different assumptions are made and thus different hypotheses are created.

Origin - Big Bang model with many gaps

If there was a big bang, where did the matter for the big bang come from and where did the primordial soup come from?

God created the world out of nothing by his WORD: God and the Bible are not a stopgap for us because we cannot find scientific arguments for origins. We (creationists) start from the Bible as our foundation and try to find scientific arguments for the authenticity of God's word - not the other way around!

||

Timing

The common methods, such as the C14 method, are extremely inaccurate for time calculations beyond 1,000 years, precisely because this method assumes that the same amount of radioactive C14 was in the atmosphere in the past, which really need not be the case. Evolutionists stick (stubbornly) to the million-year division of rock layers, and anything that doesn't fit in there is discarded.

One has measured the ablation of the mountain tops, which is 0.2 mm per year. If these mountains were 5 million years old, they would have been eroded long ago! Elsewhere in the Alps, the mountains are still being lifted about 1mm per year. Imagine how high the Alps should be if they were 10 million years old: namely, 10,000 m!

If the first humans lived 40,000 years ago, there should be 430 billion people in the world today. Well - you could assume that humanity has often been wiped out almost to the last. However, we would then have to find tons of bones, which isn't the case.

A slightly different argument against chronology is the Cambrian leap:

In the Precambrian (570 million years ago BC), there were only single-celled organisms. In the Cambrian (from 570 million years BC), the first fossils were found, as if suddenly out of nowhere. This gap in the development from single-celled organisms to humans, so-called missing links are another argument against the theory of evolution. These missing links (e.g. from pterosaurs to birds) raise many questions. Just the transition from aquatic to terrestrial animals would require an enormous number of adaptations such as overcoming the higher dead load, inventing a new respiration concept and solving the evaporation problem.

||

Fandom as the main argument of evolutionary theory

It is important to know that evolutionary theory sees chance as the driving force and selection pressure (the fitter survives) as the direction-giving force. Simply put evolution is possible given a lot of time, since with certain assumptions in probability you can show that chance with a direction giving force makes change possible.

On probability, you have to say that assumptions are always made, depending on how you make the assumptions, evolution becomes possible or impossible by means of millions of years. But since I don't want to bother you with math, an example to illustrate:

The system of our human "instruction" (DNA) in the cell is similar to Morse code. Instead of dots and dashes, we have the four bases (abbreviated here as letters) A, T, G, and C in our code. These are strung together and this can be used to write "words and sentences" (genes) such as "This person has brown eyes". How likely is it that I will meaninglessly Morse dots and dashes and by deciphering the Morse code, a meaningful book will emerge from words and sentences? The DNA in each tiny cell, rolled apart, is on average 6 cm long. A model of DNA with a diameter of one meter would have to rise 1350 million kilometers - that is, about 2000 times to the moon and back! This "miracle", claims the theory of evolution, came about after a big bang over millions of years - as if the big bang wasn't "miracle" enough!

Darwin had put forward the theory, which is quite correct, that the "fittest" survives. In plain English, this means that the animal species which have an advantage over others are more likely to survive. Thus the fitter animals are selected and with it also those genes, which make the animal or the plant fitter! But if you want to explain the formation of species with this theory, like for example from the water animal to the land animal or even the formation of a complex organ like for example the eye, it becomes extremely difficult. However, the theory of evolution tries to accomplish changes step by step via many small changes in the DNA (mutations). The problem is, however, that a change that leads to an intermediate form must also be "fitter" (a fish that starts to form its gills towards the lungs or to give its fins claw structures is not really fitter). This in turn assumes that some changes, all of which must produce an improvement, must happen simultaneously. Again, however, the odds are against this. Thus, even the "smallest evolutionary steps" then often become much too large to take place.

||

Macro - Microevolution

Microevolution = Animals and plants have adapted to the environment and changed as a result, but only within a species

Macroevolution = Animals and plants have supposedly changed through competitive pressures over millions of years to create new species of animals and plants

Since microevolution has been observed in nature and is not in conflict with the Bible either, microevolution can be accepted as fact. However, macroevolution has never been proven! Why then are the innovations, the links between the new species, so rare, if they should have a great competitive advantage? For this reason, and because the Bible says that the origin of creation is each according to its kind (Genesis 1:24), macroevolution is not tenable as a creationist.

What Darwin observed is merely microevolution. Darwin then inferred from microevolution to macroevolution, which then simply takes a lot more time, as he says.

Importantly, it is not at all easy to see the difference at the molecular level. It's not at all "stupid" to believe in evolutionary theory, because at the molecular level there are complex things that can be interpreted quite differently, depending on the glasses you have on:

In bacteria, we find that THEN in various processes, it creates new combinations to ward off certain stresses (e.g. antibiotics)! So DNA is far more flexible than we often imagine.

It has only recently been found that there is a "master gene" that controls other genes. If this gene is mutated, many mutations occur simultaneously. If the gene is repaired afterwards, the other mutations remain. For evolutionists, this is an indication of erratic evolution. Of course, in at least 99.999% of the cases only negative mutations are found. But scientists then stick to chance, probability, and lots of time, which then allows for the possibility of positive mutation.

With these brief examples, we can see that organisms are also extremely adaptable at the molecular level. Now, we must keep in mind that there are drastic consequences to believing in a God. This would mean, for example, that the Bible is true and that you have to believe everything it says! Then, if one also has a false conception of God, the fallacy that the way out is eating science is, in a sense, understandable!

Science and the Bible

The Bible's purpose is rather to explain why we live than to explain our lives scientifically!

||

Complexity of organisms

Genes are the blueprint of proteins. Proteins along with hormones in turn start genes. Hormones affect the production of proteins. Hormones are made by enzymes which are made of proteins. Now tell me where life begins! In short: Our organism is enormously complex and still far from being understood - it is supposed to have come into being simply like that? The Bible says (Rom. 1:18-25) that we should only look at nature and ourselves and then we would realize that there is a Creator!

Creation

Every animal was created after its kind (Genesis 1:24)! This does not preclude adaptation to the environment as stated (microevolution). By the way, dragons and dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible (Job 40:15-24 / Job 40:25 - 41:26 / Ps. 74:13 / Isa. 14:29).

The Creationist View of Today's Scientific Facts

Continental drift can be found rudimentarily in the Bible. (Use translations close to the original text: Genesis 10:25 or 1 Chr 1:19). About 100 years after the Flood (for calculation see Gen 11, 10-16 of Shem) to Peleg two sons were born to Eber. One was named Peleg because in his time the earth was divided. This does not refer to the Tower of Babel, which also took place soon after the Flood

Humans, with their different languages, scattered all over the earth (since it was still contiguous) and continental drift separated the peoples. Scientists use the current speed of the earth's plates to calculate the time it would take for the plates to move that far apart. However, this is based on the assumption that the Earth's plates have always moved at the same speed, which need not be the case!

The Flood: Fossilization can only occur when an animal or plant is very abruptly covered by sand or other soil and no more oxygen is added. This is the case when a catastrophe such as a flood happens. Scientists and proponents of creationism have much evidence that most of the fossils we dig up today were created in a great catastrophe: The Flood! Two examples:

A tree was found which was fossilized over several layers (according to science, each of the layers is several 100's of thousands of years old - after 1'000 years, each tree is still completely degraded!) For this reason, these layers of earth must have been piled up within a short period of time.

Further, there are many indications that the climate was different in the past, e.g. rocks from tropical areas are found in the Alps! This could be attributed to the great mantle of water that was placed around the earth at creation
(Genesis 1:6), Such a mantle of water would completely change the climate and, among other things, reduce UV radiation tremendously. In the Bible, people got much older up to Noah's time - after that, the age of people decreases drastically! Part of the water jacket was probably rained on the earth during the Flood (Genesis 7:11), the other part is still in the atmosphere today. Since the earth was completely covered with water, the earth's plates shifted by God's action right after the Flood, so that the land masses were lifted up. Some of the water probably seeped in, and the rest is still in the oceans. Since a different climate prevailed after the Flood, this would also be a reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs, which were on Noah's ark

Also dis are only "guesses", but which are in line with scientific discoveries and the Bible!

Literature

(1) Philip Yancey: Where is God in My Suffering (on topic 1)

(2) Philip Yancey: The Bible Jesus read (on topic 1)

(14) J.B.Brantschen: Why does the good God make us suffer (on topic 1)

Source credits:

Author: Philippe Diener

Content, cover image, copyright: www.besj.ch